Only Other People Get Cancer

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Prior to my hospital admission, I had never been hospitalized. I don't claim to be a superhuman since I get sick now and then, but a visit to a clinic would normally cure my fever, cold, and so on. My other serious illness was during the COVID pandemic (long after my bout with cancer), but even then I was told to quarantine myself at home, and the COVID went away after about 10 days.

Before I was diagnosed with blood cancer, I knew very little about cancer. Mainly because no one in my family has had cancer before. My knowledge about cancer was limited to lung cancer, probably because I had a few friends who passed away because of lung cancer. And another reason is that my father died due to a lung infection.

Only after I was diagnosed with cancer did I become curious about this disease called cancer and why it killed (and still kills) millions of people, World Health Organisation put the cancer death as 10 millions a year second only to heart attack.

I read here and there about blood cancer on the internet, but the biggest help came from my former boss. He gave me a book titled The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. It was written by a doctor named Siddhartha Mukherjee. It was a great book, and it won the Pulitzer Prize, though I can't remember which year. I highly recommend this book, especially for those who have little knowledge about cancer. It was written like a novel and will keep you hooked. It may not help you if you are diagnosed with cancer, but it will add to your knowledge about cancer. This is what Goodreads says about the book:

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer, from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

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